Boston Boys [01] - A Life Without You (25 page)

The door opens silently and the sweet scent of shampoo and Jesse’s cologne hits me as soon as I step inside. Memories prickle my skin as I look over our room. My bed is untouched, neatly made up and covered by a deep blue comforter. I don’t know if Jesse did it. It might as well have been Eric. Or possibly Anne.

My desk is empty aside from a few paperclips and pens. Jesse’s desk is overflowing with books and notes. The carpet is oddly empty of dirty laundry and Jesse’s bed is made up as well with a matching blue comforter. We bought them at the mall at the beginning of the semester.

Unable to help myself, I lie down on his bed and bury my face in his pillow. But the only thing I smell is faint detergent. When I go over to my bed and lie down that’s where I can smell Jesse. My pillow is covered in his scent. The sweet smell of his aftershave
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and his natural aroma is etched into the pillowcase. I feel as if I can touch his skin on the pillow. My heart thuds in my ears and I can almost feel the blood course through every vein in my body when I realize that he’s been sleeping in my bed.

I should end this. I’m causing him pain. I knew that already but I didn’t really realize it for real until now. I should just give in and take Jesse back. To hell with Chirpy and everything else. I just want to hold him again. I want to be his even if he can never be mine. I love Jesse with every molecule in my body and if I love him so much then why should I keep hurting him?

It’s been forever since we last made love on this bed.

It still feels like it was yesterday that I held his body in this room. I know every inch of him, every move, every reaction. I know his body better than I know my own. When we make love I play him like an instrument, testing out new combinations each time to see how he reacts. I can still feel his breath against my neck and hear his voice moaning out my name. He was happy when we were together and making him happy is what I should do.

These are the kind of thoughts Eric has been trying to make me aware of.

I’m able to identify them now, but do I really care? What’s the point if we’re both miserable apart?

There’s something lumpy under my chest. I dig my hand under the covers and pull out a t-shirt of mine that I used to sleep in. My smell is completely gone and all I can smell is
Jesse…

Jesse…Jesse...

“Jesse,” I whisper against the t-shirt and close my eyes. I bury my face in the shirt and push the front of my body against the bed to try to get closer to him. In my mind I kiss his soft lips, caress his pretty face, and breathe in his sweet scent. I bathe myself in Jesse. He doesn’t resist. He lets me kiss him and run my hands down his back and under his shirt. He responds by kissing me and sliding his tongue against mine. He grabs my waist with strong, determined fingers. There’s a noise as we knock down a A Life Without You
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lamp and Jesse laughs in my ear.

“Is that your roommate?” says a girl’s voice. Chirpy? Why is this dream turning into a nightmare? But that voice is nothing like hers.

“Yeah,” Jesse breathes. I try to grab him, but he’s standing too far away.

“Wow, he’s gorgeous, is he single?” says the girl.

“No,” says Jesse, still a little breathless, but also a little more firm.

“Damn. Well, we should let him sleep. We could go to my room, my roommate’s out for the day.”

“Okay,” Jesse whispers.

No! Don’t go!

I wake up with a start and it takes a while to realize I’m back in my old room. When I raise myself I see that I’m not alone. In the doorway stands Jesse with a black-haired girl. Why does she have her hand on his shoulder?

I can’t interpret the look on Jesse’s face in any other way than a look of surprise. I can’t imagine what the expression on my own face must be, if I even have one. I bite my jaws together when he puts his hand on her waist and whispers something in her ear. She smiles, nods and leaves.

“So, you really are the cheating type after all, huh?” I don’t know what made me say it, but I’m hurt, and angry, and extremely frustrated. Didn’t I come here to make him happy?

The door is still open and he hasn’t moved. “You’re with Eric now, aren’t you?”

I stand up and wobble slightly. Man, I must have been tired.

“I was talking about Anne.”

Jesse walks a few paces into the room, his eyes questioning, his mouth half parted. What is he thinking?

“I broke up with her. She got that STD from someone else.”
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It takes me a while to register, but when I finally do I pull out the test results from my pocket. “Guess I won’t have to show you this then.” I crumple it into a paper ball and toss it into the wastebasket. I’m glad he wasn’t infected with the STD and I’m glad that Chirpy cheated. But there’s something about that nagging at me…

“W-When did you get your results back?” I ask, the pain in my chest rising steadily.

“Yesterday,” Jesse answers. He stands motionlessly against the door that leads into the bathroom with his thumbs in his pockets.

“I was clean. Anne slept with some other guy. I’m very sorry I accused you.”

I have to swallow a few times before I let out a cold laugh. He wasn’t crying over me last night. He was crying because of his breakup with Anne. I feel so stupid. I slump back down on the bed and focus on my hands in my lap. I don’t want him to see how my eyes are reddening with tears of disappointment. Tears of anger because of my own idiocy. When did I get so conceited?

“Adam,” he says and I stir at the sound of my name but keep my head down.

What should I do? I want to curl up and die at his feet, but I’m so pissed off. He broke up with Chirpy and moved onto the next girl the next day. He didn’t come to me to tell me he was no longer seeing Anne. Even though he broke up with her he’s always going to choose to be with a girl on the outside because he’ll never want the world to know that he’s got a male lover. It would always be a life of hiding and sharing.

“Adam,” Jesse repeats.

When did he walk up to me?

He kneels down and takes my hands into his. They feel so warm against my cold skin. I close my eyes before a sob escapes my lips.

“What are you thinking about?” Jesse whispers. “Tell me, please.”

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When did he become so mature? When did I become so weak and immature?

I keep my eyes clenched. My whisper is so low that I can barely hear it myself.

“Jesse, I…”

What am I going to tell him? I can’t even begin to find the words. What do I want to do? It’s all a mess now and I’m completely lost.

“Adam! You lying piece of shit,” someone shouts from the hallway. “Where the fuck are you?”

Shoes thump against the hallway carpet and grow louder as they approach. I open my eyes and look straight into Jesse’s. His expression is so calm it pierces my heart. What am I to him?

“Adam?” Eric’s voice booms from the doorway. “What the hell are you doing in here? You said you were going out for coffee and you’ve been gone two hours. We need to get back right now or we’ll lose our table at the library. Do you want to stay up all night again studying?”

Jesse slowly shifts his gaze from me to Eric. “You’re studying?

That’s what you’re doing late at night?”

“What the hell would we be doing other than studying?” Eric shouts. “You…” He points at Jesse. “When the hell are you going to get it through your thick skull that Adam and I aren’t fucking?”

Jesse’s hands twitch around mine.

“Adam, get your ass off that bed and get out,” Eric commands.

If things had been the other way around, if I had been in Jesse’s shoes and believed that he and Eric were lovers I would have told him about my breakup and given him a chance to leave Eric and come back to me. I would have done that if I had really loved him. If I had really wanted him. I guess Jesse just doesn’t want me badly enough.

Jesse’s attention snaps back to me when I remove my hands from his.

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“Alright,” I whisper and stand up. Eric’s sky-blue eyes are cold with fury as he scans my face. I know why; my cheeks are wet with tears.

“Adam, wait!” Jesse calls and grabs my shirt before I cross the threshold. “Let’s just talk for a minute, okay?”

“If you care about him…” Eric says through clenched teeth,

“…then you’ll keep your shit to yourself until after the exams.

He doesn’t need his head filled with bullshit right now. Don’t you have studying of your own to do?”

I feel Jesse’s flinch through his grip on my shirt.

It’s not that I care about studying. I think I could pass my exams without studying, but if there is anything that can get my mind off Jesse, it’s Eric’s hard-core cramming. It didn’t work this morning, but it has worked almost every other time. It’s time I drown myself in work to get my mind off Jesse for good.

His grip on my shirt loosens and I walk out the door.

Four exams over and only one to go. Eric has a love-hate relationship with exams. He’s extremely nervous in the days leading up to one, but he’s grinning like an idiot after they’re done. Kind of like now.

We’re taking a breather for the rest of the day until the exam starts. Eric has this rule that we’re not supposed to study at all on the day itself or it’ll mess up our memory. Eric’s cheating, though, because he’s shuffling his notes around claiming to be

‘organizing’ but I know he’s memorizing stuff.

What have I been doing? Sulking. It seems to have become the new me.

I saw Jesse with that girl again this morning. They were chatting and laughing and she kept putting her claws on him. Not in a groping kind of way or anything, just these little ‘accidental’

touches people do when they flirt. I kept willing Jesse to swat her fingers away, but he didn’t.

Eric was right, though. Jesse needs to decide if he wants to be gay or not and I need to let him. Openly gay, that is, because I know he’s well capable of being gay when it’s just the two of us. I know I can’t live a life of hiding my sexuality or my relationships.

I wouldn’t expect him to tell his parents or anything, just be able to hold my hand in public and go on dates and such. His family and old friends all live in a different state, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

“Brooding…” Eric sings, leaning his chair back by pushing his foot against his desk.

“I can’t help it, okay? He’s seeing someone else. You’d brood too if the guy you loved was seeing someone else.” Me getting over Jesse didn’t work. Or it hasn’t yet. I’ll probably have to switch dorms to have a fighting chance – maybe even colleges.

Eric’s hard-core disco pop, or whatever the hell this music is
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supposed to be, is giving me a headache.

He flicks through a stack of papers and dumps some into the wastebasket. “Maybe. But I’d probably take revenge and try to break them up and claim him for myself if it were me.” A derisive laugh passes my lips. “Yeah, like you’d allow me to do that. You won’t even let me speak to him.” Eric’s lips curl, eyes still on the notes. “And you’re so obedient.

I like it.”

I push myself off my bed. “What the hell does that mean?

The last time I ‘disobeyed you’ and went to see him you flew off your handle.”

He points a jeweled and neatly manicured finger at me. “That was different. You were wasting valuable study time. Getting drowned in Jesse again at that point wouldn’t have done you any good.” He picks up a course book and opens it in the middle. “In fact, I forbid you see him until the exam is over, but you’re free to do as you like after that.”

I pace around the cramped room, kicking scrunched up paper balls as I do.

“You mean you won’t object if Jesse and I get back together?”

“Quarter,” Eric mumbles.

“Oh shut up,” I growl, but dutifully drop a quarter into the Jesse-Jar.

“I won’t object if he meets your conditions. You’ll only end up hurt if he doesn’t, you know? Oh, and you need to stick to our prioritization deal as well if you do get back together or I’ll raise heartache hell again.”

I clench my jaws. “You know, you look all cute and innocent to outsiders, but you’re like a Rottweiler once people get to know you. Does Chester know this side of you?”

“Of course he does,” Eric replies and lazily flicks through the book. “That’s one of the million things he likes about me. But Chester and I are through – his loss.” A Life Without You
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“You know what, I’m supposed to be relaxing today, or so you said, but I’m not relaxing at all in this room with you. I’m going out for some food.”

“Cool, then you can bring me some while you’re at it.” I grumble while I weave through my pockets in search of money. When I only find a quarter I snatch my wallet off my bedside table and yank the door open.

Of all the things I might have expected to happen today, I never would have expected to see Jesse standing outside Eric’s door with his hand raised to knock. He looks as surprised as I feel.

“Jesse?” I say.

“Quarter,” Eric calls, still buried in his book by his desk.

“Damn it,” I growl through bared teeth and cast a deadly look at him over my shoulder. But I shove my hand into my pocket and Jesse quietly watches me add a quarter to the almost-full jar.

“I’m out of quarters now.”

“Then stop saying that name,” Eric mumbles, completely lost in his book and so cheating on his no-studying-on-exam-day policy.

That’s not what concerns me, however. It’s Jesse’s widening eyes as he seems to understand what the deal is with the jar.

Just great.

“He’s at the door, numbskull.”

Eric’s chair drops on all fours with a clatter. Maybe I should buy him a proper office chair as thanks for taking care of me. He twists in his seat and there’s an awkward moment where no one says anything.

“I’m taking the quarter back since this time it doesn’t count,” I say to break the silence, but getting the quarter out of the jar will prove tricky because the neck is so narrow.